My Information

How I would describe myself: a somewhat shy bookworm, news junkie and linguist

Marital status: blissfully single

Employment status: semi-retired…I work at two low-paying, fairly low-stress jobs while trying to figure out how to maintain my standard of living during my sunset years.

God-given talent: I tell folks that I wasn’t born rich or handsome, and I have pitifully little in the way of athletic ability. However, I have been blessed with a love of and fascination with languages (those spoken by humans and those used by machines).

Best book I ever read: 'Language in Thought and Action' by S.I. Hayakawa. Why? It taught me how to express myself in a clearer fashion. Also, it taught me how to see through a lot of the verbal trickery that we are so often subjected to. The author takes the very deep subject of semantics and breaks it down into easily digestible chunks.

Best two decisions I ever made: not to get married and not to have children

How I ended up at www.dreamincode.net: I started studying Python and joined a forum called www.python-forum.org. Not very long afterwards, it folded. Apparently there was an ownership transfer or something, but it became inaccessible…and when you have a question about programming, accessibility means a lot; so I came here. This looks like a nice, well-established place where I can get help if I need it.

In the profile photo, I’m the old guy, in case you’re wondering. The little girl is one of my goddaughters. Since I have no biological children, she’s right up there with the sun, the moon, and the stars. There’s a lot to be said for godparenthood. I consider myself more than a $10-for-your-birthday-and-come-to-your-high-school-graduation sort of godfather. Kids need the steady presence of a father figure and/or positive male role model.

I think I express myself better textually than orally. When I write out what I wish to say, I have the opportunity to pick and choose how best to get my point across. After I got my PC with Windows, one of the very first things I learned to do was Copy and Paste.

I’m what you might call a xenophile (opposite of a xenophobe) in that, in general, I find foreign cultures, languages and people interesting. One of the best questions to ask a foreign visitor to the USA is: What surprised you the most about this country? You can get some pretty enlightening answers, because they see things about this country that we take for granted.

I am probably more interested in my fellow forum members as people than as computer wizards who can help me with programming problems. Right now I’m making good progress with an on-line Python tutorial and have so far been able to cope with my error messages on my own (although over time, that could change).